Clinical Training: The Center's professional training programs provide opportunities for university students to receive hands-on experience in evaluating and treating language disorders in young children. Students are supervised by certified speech-language pathologists as they provide therapy in individual, small-group, and classroom settings. Students also collaborate with professionals from other disciplines as part of a multi-disciplinary team, and form an integral part of the Center's community outreach programs.
Research Training: Graduate and undergraduate students are trained to conduct research with the children who participate in the various programs described above. The Center's research goal is to a) assess the strengths and needs that children with impaired language skills bring to language-learning tasks, b) identify the treatment conditions under which learning is facilitated, and c) apply the results in intervention and therapy. As the children learn new aspects of language in interactive, child-friendly play sessions, researchers document how successful learning is achieved. The conditions that facilitate successful learning are then tested in the classroom and therapy settings for subsequent application.
